“If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, Be a scrub in the valley — but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass, And some highway happier make; If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass — But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew, There’s something for all of us here, There’s big work to do, and there’s lesser to do, And the task you must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail —
Be the best of whatever you are!”

By Douglas Malloch (1877 – 1938) : Malloch was an American poet, short story writer, and associate editor of American Lumberman magazine. He was very popular on the lecture circuit doing public readings of his stories and poems. Malloch’s name became a familiar one at the dawn of the 20th century to many thousands of men who ranged the forests and felled the trees. As reviewers wrote, “Malloch’s philosophy is the philosophy of contentment.” “He sings of the open, of hard work, of exposure, of rough living and rough loving. It is verse which belongs to the strong-armed school; a healthy antidote to the softening tendencies which creep in with an age that loves luxury too well.”

He is noted for writing The Round River Drive, which was only the second appearance in print of Paul Bunyan. Besides poetry of the woods, he was commissioned to write a Michigan State Song. His second wife, Helen Miller Malloch, was a newswoman who gained fame in her own right as founder of the National Association of Presswomen.